Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Sharing an incident I will never forget. My son and his wife were living in Portland, Oregon. I went to visit a few days in the later part of February of 1996. If you are familiar with Oregon, you know it is cold and rains most every day. They both worked, and had this sweet Cocker Spaniel puppy. Her name was Calamity. While they were working, I baby set with her. Over the weekend, they had planed a little trip or had to work, cannot remember which. That left me and Calamity alone. Early that Saturday morning, which was very cold, I went out to get the paper. I only had on my gown as I was just going to dash out and right back. Big mistake. The door locked behind me. I had no key, no way to contact them, freezing to death, and worried about the puppy. Panic set in!

I was in an area totally strange to me. I just picked a house from random. Knew absolutely no one around there. Bear in mind this was a Saturday and most people were off and sleeping in late. I am sure it was annoying as well as a shock when I aroused the neighbors from their sleep. Especially, when the lady saw a total stranger, stressed out, and in her gown standing at the door in the cold, early morning. I explained my predicament to her. She very graciously invited me in, got me a coat, made coffee, and tried to calm me down.

After awhile, she got her husband up to join in this fiasco. We discussed the situation and he tried to figure out what to do. He made several calls to different places that would have a connection to the addition, but no one answered. Beings it was a Saturday, the places he called were closed. After a couple of hours, I asked him to try and find a locksmith. He hated to do that as it is costly. We finally decided there was nothing else left to do. He found one, and in less than five minutes upon his arrival, he had the door unlocked. Luckily, I had brought enough money. I have never met strangers that were as nice and helpful as this couple. I definitely randomly selected the right house.

After I returned home, I sent her a little token of my appreciation. This is the note I received back from her. Wish I knew their whereabouts now.That chapter ended, but another begin. On Sunday morning, I broke my glasses. Why do things always seem to happen on the weekend, when it is hard to find help? My daughter-in-law drove around for sometime trying to find an optical place open. Bear in mind, this was on Sunday. Thank goodness we finally found one and solved that issue. As of today, I have not been back to Portland, Oregon, and most likely never will again. My family moved to Texas shortly after that. How fortunate for me.

Oh LV, I have a vision in my mind. Probably because something very similar happened to my Mom! she went out to get the paper on a snowy morning and the door blew shut and locked her out. She had to go to the garage and put garbage bags on her feet. She said people she knew drove by and waved...did they not realize this was unusual for my Mom? Someone finally picked her up and took her to her friends house who had a key.Makes me giggle, but it was stressful at the time.I wish she was here for me to tell her your story.